The Narco News Bulletin

"The
Name of Our Country is América"

--
Simón Bolívar

March 29, 2001 Publisher's
Note:This is an interview with exiled Colombian journalist
Alfredo Molano that we conducted in Barcelona last July about
the hidden agendas of Plan Colombia.

The Colombia Media Project,
through the Colombia Labor Monitor, has invited readers in the
New York area to meet Alfredo Molano on Monday, April 2, 2001,
at 6:30 p.m. at the Columbia University Law School, 435 West
116th Street (off Amsterdam Ave.)

For more information call
the Colombia Media Project at (212)802-7209

Alfredo Molano is one
of the most conscientious and precise critics of the Plan Colombia
military aid package and we highly recommend attendance at this
forum next Monday night in New York. Here are his words from
last Summer, many of which predicted exactly what is happening
today...

Hidden Motives for a
War

A Conversation
in Exile

Washington's
Plan Colombia will not slow the illegal drug trade.

But Plan Colombia
will

spread
the cocaine crop to Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and to Northern
Colombia

increase
the narco-power of violent paramilitary squads and their impunity
to commit human rights atrocities (and to threaten journalists)

displace
Colombian peasants with the motive of constructing a new Atlantic-Pacific
canal within Colombia

cause
grave environmental harm to the Amazon jungle

AUGUST 7, 2000; BARCELONA:
Colombian journalist Alfredo Molano and his family received death
threats from US-backed military and paramilitary forces because
he criticized them in his Sunday newspaper column in the daily
El
Espectador
of Bogotá. Today the Molano family lives in exile, in
Europe, in the Catalonian city of Barcelona.

Molano, a leading expert
on agriculture and the substitution of coca crops, granted an
interview to The Narco News Bulletin in his apartment
in a traditional fisherman's neighborhood of Barcelona on July
31, 2000. The interview with publisher Al Giordano was conducted
in Spanish and translated to English for this report. Narco
News also offered some of our own analysis about why certain
conservative-libertarian sectors of the US drug policy reform
movement don't want to listen to what their natural allies in
Latin América are saying about the drug war, and the greater
América's important contribution of developing a legalization
argument from the Left.

Here, Molano speaks on
the imminent danger to his country posed by the $1.3 billion
"Plan Colombia" military aid package from Washington.
He cites the importance of Europe's refusal to participate and
affirms, "The best way to fight against drug trafficking
is to legalize it." He also explains why the Latin American
Left increasingly embraces the legalization cause.

July
31, 2000
Barcelona, Catalunya

NARCO NEWS: Let's talk first about "Plan
Colombia." Here in Europe, according to Le
Monde of Paris, there is a lot of resistance by European
countries to give money to this plan by Bogotá and Washington,
a plan that is, essentially, a military plan. What's your opinion?

ALFREDO MOLANO: Well, for us, the Colombians,
we want there to be a negotiation between the State and the Guerrilla.
It seems to us very fortunate that Europe has been divided over
this and has resisted endorsing Plan Colombia as elaborated by
Washington. The Plan was first proposed by the Colombian government
and then brought to Washington, and was reworked by people in
the State Department and maybe some university academics. The
lobbyists for "Black Hawk" helicopters also participated
in changing the Plan.

It was a plan made to
fit the vested interests in Washington, the foreign businesses,
the military contractors that also influence the Colombian government.
And naturally the Washington interests to create more favorable
conditions for North American investments, to create the basis
for an offensive against drug trafficking and the guerrilla movement.

To us it seems that Plan
Colombia is not only a plan against drug trafficking nor a plan
exclusively for Colombia. In fact it is a regional plan. It's
evident, very much so, more than ever, that Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela
and to a less dramatic extent Brazil will be swept into it. There
is great social and political instability in Bolivia, in Panama
and also in Brazil. And this is considered a threat against the
security of the interests behind economic opening, or as we say,
the globalizing hegemony of the United States. I don't say this
is a very dangerous threat but rather a situation that can create
difficulties for certain interests in the United States.

Plan Colombia from the
point of view of the Colombian state is a very important thing.
It means weapons to strengthen the military forces and obligate
the guerrilla to negotiate below conditions more favorable to
the government. And if the government is strengthened and the
guerrilla doesn't succeed, naturally, they're going to be forced
to negotiate more cheaply.

Here surges the first
question: Is it possible that this reorganization of military
forces, this military offensive against the guerrilla, is going
to bring them to their knees? Or is it more likely that this
will generalize the war to such a degree that it will spread
to a regional level? Already they are feeling the effects, prior
to the war, in Ecuador. There are demonstrations and movements

NARCO NEWS: already there are Colombian refugees swarming
into Ecuador, and there is the military base there in Manta

MOLANO: but not only in Manta. To me it appears
that it won't be easy to bring the guerrilla to negotiate on
its knees. What is going to happen is that the war will escalate
and become more complex. Because the guerrilla is going to say,
"If you attack our financial bases, which are kidnapping
and taxing the cultivation of drugs in the country, then we will
also hit the economy of the enemy." This is what happens
in any war. To attack the financial sources of the enemy is to
attack the enemy. Thus, they will attack the electric infrastructure,
the petroleum infrastructure, the exploration. Did you know that
Colombia already has a deficit economy? It has improved a little
bit but continues being negative. Imagine, with the economic
structure of Colombia so delicate already without serious attacks
on the electric and economic infrastructures. If these are touched,
the country will be paralyzed.

NARCO NEWS: In spite of all the dollars that supposedly are
going to come with Plan Colombia, you are saying that in the
end, it will damage the economy more than help it?

MOLANO: Yes. The dollars will never arrive in Colombia
because 80 percent of the dollars come in the form of weapons.
They come in helicopters, in fuel, in herbicides. This doesn't
enter the Colombian economy. A little bit does, but, really,
only about 20 percent.

That Plan Colombia as
a strategy will simply explode our internal war but also will
threaten to involve the entire region.

NARCO NEWS: And yesterday Hugo Chávez won reelection
in Venezuela, which worries Washington a lot.

MOLANO: Very much so, more than even Colombia, because
if Colombia falls into war, nothing will happen to the economy
in North America. But if Chávez cuts the oil, it complicates
things. Above all because the price of oil is rising and this
raises interest rates.

Alright, let's look at
Europe. The Colombian government delivered two Plan Colombias,
one to Washington, for the weapons, and the other to Europe

NARCO NEWS: for the hospitals and refugee camps that
will be required because of the weapons.

MOLANO: The Europeans are not clowns. They know that to
enter into this plan is to enter into a war. And it is a war
that has no benefits for Europe. It will only complicate things
in Europe because it will harm the investments it already has
in Colombia. And so Europe has been divided over the plan.

NARCO NEWS: What does it mean that Europe is not going for
Plan Colombia?

MOLANO: This is very important. It means that the interference
by Washington is more visible.

NARCO NEWS: more isolated.

MOLANO: Yes, Washington is isolated. Europe has given
a little bit of money. Spain gave $100 million, Norway, $20 million.
And the loans by the Inter-American Bank include $300 million
dollars to Plan Colombia that were transferred from America as
loans for the European part of the plan. That was about public
relations. It doesn't mean much.

NARCO NEWS: But Washington pushes forward with Plan Colombia
with or without Europe?

MOLANO: Yes, of course, but this makes it appear more
interventionist. Now the big question about Plan Colombia is:
Will it be able to stop the drug trade? That's the huge question.
Will it stop the cultivation of drugs?

I maintain that the same
thing will happen with the coca crops that happened with marijuana
in the 80s when they fumigated in Colombian zones. The marijuana
crop ended up escaping to the United States. In Peru and Bolivia
during the 90s coca crops were eradicated and substituted - not
the indigenous coca but the commercial coca - and this crop has
relocated to Colombia. I see the same thing happening with Plan
Colombia. The coca crop will move to Ecuador, which hasn't had
it, and they will return to planting coca in Peru. Certainly
in Bolivia this will happen, where there is a very powerful indigenous-popular
movement of peasants. And coca will start to be grown in Brazil.

Venezuela doesn't have
this problem because there are not peasant farmers there like
in Colombia. But Ecuador will be the most affected. Ecuador will
enter into the production of coca.

NARCO NEWS: So what is Washington's motive to displace the
coca crop to these other countries?

MOLANO: That is the question. There will be two types
of displacement: one to the border countries, and the other inside
of Colombia. Inside of Colombia it is likely that the crops will
be displaced from the South, where the guerrilla is based, to
the North, where the paramilitaries are based.

I believe that one of
the objectives is to displace the coca from the South to the
North and give control over the crops to the paramilitaries,
who will be the infantry of the war. Because the United States
will manage the air war with the airplanes, with the Black Hawk
helicopters, but the concrete troops will be those of the paramilitaries,
who are right now very limited in what they can do. Because in
the United States there are viewed as corrupted and as violators
of human rights.

NARCO NEWS: Which economic interests have the strongest connections
with the paramilitaries?

MOLANO: First, the drug traffickers. This is very clear.
The guerrilla doesn't manage the drug trade, it simply taxes
the crops. But it is the paramilitaries who manage the exportation.
They are the ones who take the drugs out of the country.

NARCO NEWS: They're the middlemen.

MOLANO: And they are going to get more involved in the
drug trade. A few days ago five tons of cocaine that belonged
to the paramilitaries was seized. And there are other interests:
those of the great landowners. As the guerrilla has been growing
within their zone, various things have happened. First, the large
landowners can be kidnapped and made to pay taxes to the guerrilla.
Second, the sale value of the land goes down. Because of this
the owners pay the paramilitaries with money, with impunity and
with land. Because the zones where the peasants are displaced
become the zones where the paramilitary gains control. Economically,
this is to say that the regions where they have kicked out the
peasants are the zones that fall into the hands of the paramilitaries.
This is business. And the foreign business interests want to
see them win.

And now there is another
great interest for which they are putting the paramilitaries
in place: The Atrato-a-Trando Canal. This is a Canal that could
replace the Panama Canal. It would go from the Rio Atrato to
the Pacific town of Trando to join two rivers together.

The Atrato River
meets the Atlantic Ocean at the city of Turbo on the Colombia-Panama
border.

Plan Colombia will aid
efforts by ranchers and paramilitary squads to displace thousands
of peasants from this region to remove opposition to plans for
an Atlantic-Pacific canal.

The ranchers are in this
region. The paramilitaries are working in the entire zone, which
is called Darien. The ranchers are in favor of constructing the
canal, clearly.

And there is another project
that is even more important. It is the Panamerican highway, which
is interrupted precisely in this region. And this is exactly
where they have kicked out the people. Why? Because people protest
and this makes for conditions in which the guerrilla can enter.

Thus, these are the two
big projects. And they are displacing the population from there
to avoid having to deal with the guerrilla. The guerrilla is
based further south. Nobody has removed them from there.

NARCO NEWS: In 1993 the then-Attorney General of Colombia
Gustavo de Greiff traveled to Baltimore, Maryland, invited by
its mayor Kurt Schmoke. And there he gave a speech saying that
the only way to end the violence and instability associated with
the drug trade is to legalize drugs. The response of the US government
- which had previously declared de Greiff a hero of the war-on-drugs
- was to attack this man. They accused him, without evidence,
of being corrupt and took away his visa to travel in the US.
Even after their allegations were proven absolutely false they
continued to withhold his visa. And some other Colombians have
told us that they are in agreement with de Greiff and with legalization
but they are afraid to say so publicly because they fear the
same could happen to them. What do you think?

MOLANO: I'll tell you something. Legalization has a lot
of support in Colombia. It has support in academia. It has a
lot of support in many sectors of the middle class. And it is
supported by the Left.

NARCO NEWS: Including the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia) this year came out for legalization .

MOLANO: Yes, including the FARC. These sectors think that
this is the solution. But the Colombian government is allied
with Washington, not with legalization. There are not opportunities
to partially legalize in Colombia or in the region. But I believe
that in the long term this is one of the solutions. It's true
that Washington punished de Greiff in this way. And to a certain
degree they did the same to President Ernesto Samper. Did you
know that Samper, 20 years ago, as president of a professional
association proposed the legalization of marijuana? And this
is one of the reasons that Washington, step by step, got revenge
on him. The United States, one way or another, works to associate
the people who favor legalization with the people who help the
drug traffickers. That is totally contrary to what would happen
if drugs were legalized and to what we think.

The best way to fight
against drug trafficking is to legalize it. I believe it is a
very worthy movement. But my worry is that this tendency has
lost momentum. When the Nobel economist Milton Friedman came
out for legalization, there had been a big movement. The British
magazine The Economist also advocated for it. Some major
columnists did the same. There was a movement. In Italy they
succeeded in decriminalizing. And what happened to this movement?

NARCO NEWS: Not just Italy but Spain decriminalized. And this
month the movement has succeeded in Portugal. And in September,
Portugal is likely to go even further toward legalizing.

There is a movement including in the United
States. First, something like eight states have legalized marijuana
for medicine through voter referenda. And this wins, each time,
by greater margins. There are today, for the first time, two
governors, Republican Gary Johnson of New Mexico and Independent
Jesse Ventura of Minnesota, who have publicly called for legalizing
marijuana and for a drastic reform of the drug war system. As
we speak today in Barcelona, the US Republican party holds its
convention in Philadelphia. And there is a Shadow Convention
led by Arianna Huffington and other politicians and members of
Civil Society saying that the drug laws must be reformed. Not
all of them use the word legalization. Some say decriminalize,
others talk about harm reduction, but all of them aimed against
the current prohibition.

But I think you are right in one sense:
Precisely because the legalization movement for so many years
was led by the libertarian right, associated with people like
Friedman and William Buckley, the movement has not developed
in the United States a coherent argument from the Left or even
for liberals. And without this wing developed the movement lacks
a center, too. Thus, the US reformers don't understand how significant
it was this month when in Portugal all the political parties
of the Left united behind decriminalization. Some of the economic
libertarians don't want to understand it. This gives a lot of
strength, also, to the movement in Latin America, in Venezuela
- where Chávez is intelligent on these issues - in Colombia
and in Mexico where there is a lot of support that is not yet
visible because the movement has not had a concrete public issue
to focus upon.

What everybody in Latin America says is
that no country can do it alone. If Colombia did it

MOLANO: they would flatten us.

NARCO NEWS: if not with military invasion, then with
economic blockade. But in this scenario, Mexico has a great power,
because Washington cannot afford to invade Mexico militarily
nor blockade it economically. And this is because each time the
Mexican Peso goes down in value, another million Mexican immigrants
stream over the US border. And this is a bigger problem for the
gringo politicians.

Thus, the theory is that a Pan-American
alliance can create more space and backing for something to happen
in Mexico to pressure Washington. And Washington is terrified
of this. Washington is completely involved in the Vicente Fox
pre-presidency as it was in the PRI before him. Many of the 500
CIA agents that Washington has on the ground in Mexico are dedicated
not to questions of national security but rather to preventing
any drug reform movement from happening.

But there is a lot of conscience in Mexico
that the war on drugs is phony. The Zapatistas know it. The Mexican
Left knows it. The youth knows it. There are members of Vicente
Fox's own PAN party who know it and also members of the PRI who
believe in this. The Mexican people are not ideologically committed
to drug prohibition. But there is money from Washington to create
mercenary officials at all levels in the service of prohibition;
this is the other kind of drug war corruption of officials. Some
are taking money from the narco and from Washington. If Mexico
heard more noise out of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama,
more Mexicans would be speaking out for legalization.

MOLANO: Legalization is something that all the large sectors
of my country support. To create a legalization movement would
be very important.

About two years ago a
man named Carlos Alonzo collected a million signatures to put
legalization on the ballot. And the government challenged it,
complicated it, created legal traps to prevent this from coming
to a referendum. Because it would have been a very high vote
for legalization, they did not allow it to happen.

What has happened, now,
is that the legalization cause doesn't have as much importance
because of the war. The war is of such a nature that we are all
involved in that. Our first wish is to end the war, not the drug
trade, although if we think logically, only by ending the drug
trade can we end the war. And the only way to end the illicit
drug trade is through legalization.

NARCO NEWS: And while the population is involved in the issue
of the war, the guerrilla movements are more involved in the
issue of legalization. Explain to our readers how the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC, came to the decision to support
legalization after so many years of silence on the theme. What
happened?

MOLANO: I think they understand that the question of legalization
affects the question of the crops, the production and the consumption
of drugs. Their position is very logical. Not only politically,
but also economically. The only way to end the drug trafficking
is to legalize. As for the crops, maybe not: that is an economic
question, because the illicit crops are grown also due to the
lack of an agrarian reform. And the corruption of the authorities
has permitted drug trafficking. Clearly, it's the price of the
drugs that drives it. The high price pays for the corruption.

NARCO NEWS: As someone who has a long background as an expert
on crop substitution, how would legalization affect the enactment
of agrarian reform and a crop substitution program?

MOLANO: I believe that legalization of drugs would make
agrarian reform more possible. Crop substitution is possible
to the extent that there are economic alternatives to growing
coca. If the price of coca goes down, naturally they can grow
other crops. It would also ease the transport of other farm products.
It would facilitate the substitution. Lowering the price of coca,
really, raises the value of other crops. This is one of the difficulties.
The quality of the drugs each day turns more refined, more pure.
The peasants keep growing it and the quantity they grow remains
more or less unchanged. It stays at about 110,000 hectares of
coca. But these are hectares that move from place to place in
the jungle because of the prohibition.

Legalization, for example,
would serve not only crop substitution, but also the jungle.
The jungle, the Amazon, is being destroyed mainly because of
the cultivation of coca and because the people are moving the
crop around. It destroys more and more jungle. There is a very
direct connection between legalization and the defense of the
environment. In this case the connection between the two issues
is absolutely concrete and very clear.

A more important aspect
of legalization, for me, than the fact that legalization will
help the environment, is that it will affect the social conflict,
the armed conflict. It might make a negotiated solution more
possible.

NARCO NEWS: You're saying that if there weren't such economic
interests fighting over the tremendous profits

MOLANO: Imagine, two to three billion dollars a year come
to Colombia for the coca. That's 12 billion dollars over six
years. The US cocaine economy is much larger but this is what
enters Colombia.

NARCO NEWS: But does this great quantity of money stay in
Colombia? Or does it leave the country by route of money laundering
into foreign banks?

MOLANO: It seems to be that the investments of narco-capital
are not made in Colombia because Colombia is not offering conditions
of economic security because of the war. The narcos are diverting
their money to Singapore, to Chile, to Mexico, to other regions,
but not in Colombia.

Colombia stays in the
route of the drugs but the dollars are not invested here. What
remains here is basically what they need to manage the drug trade.
But the large quantities of money are diverted to other places.
We are assigned the sin of narco-trafficking but not the silver!

NARCO NEWS: Explain for our readers in the United States why
a Colombian journalist like yourself finds himself in Barcelona,
in Europe.

MOLANO: The reality of the threats against me is that
I am a man of the Left and of the university, more or less. I
continue being very critical in Colombian society of the political
system, including of the army and naturally the paramilitaries.
This doesn't mean I'm totally in agreement with the guerrilla,
although I agree with them on many things. I agree with agrarian
reform. I agree with the reforms they've proposed for the army.
I agree with the reforms of the media and the justice system.
But naturally I don't agree with everything. First, because the
guerrilla has Stalinist roots. They are military forces and this
gives a lot of force to authoritarian tendencies. I place myself
at a distance from that. But my critiques of the system, of the
great landowners, of the ranchers, of the army, of the paramilitaries,
these are what caused the threats. And the threats grew until
I saw that not only was I in danger but my family and those close
to me.

NARCO NEWS: As a member of the Latin American Left, could
you address a few words to the Left within the United States,
where there is not this level of consciousness about drug legalization.
Some even look at the likes of Milton Friedman and confuse the
cause as something to do with free trade. They don't hear Latin
American voices through the media and not even much through the
US legalization movement. What should the Left in New York or
Texas or California or Chicago know about the importance of this
issue to the Left in Latin America?

MOLANO: I repeat what is certain: It's that the war is
costing my country a lot of blood, including on the Colombian
Left, that is not the armed Left, but rather the civil Left,
the social movements. The war makes all the struggles more difficult.
And it has a lot to do with the drug issue. If we were to have
a Left that was more independent from the guerrilla we might
accomplish more. But it has not been possible, it is not possible
and I don't believe it will become possible because the war is
every day invading more political terrain. To legalize would
be a great advance because it would notably lower the pressures
that create the war. And it would permit the Latin American Left,
in Peru, in Venezuela, in Ecuador, and above all in Colombia,
to breathe a little more.

NARCO NEWS: Might the motive of stopping the social movements,
more than the pretext of fighting drug trafficking, explain why
Washington wants the war?